sing another song for the lost ones
by altschmerz
Summary: All her life, if Riley learned one thing in Hebrew school and in the stories her mother told her, it's that Jews are brave. But right now, trapped in a pitch black room with a drugged, barely conscious Mac, both of them hurt and no idea if or when help was coming, Riley doesn't feel very brave. She feels everything but brave. (riley & mac sibling dynamic, ktavnukkah day 6, courage)


we're just gonna quietly ignore christmas episodes and roll with my jewish riley headcanon for purposes of this ktavnukkah fill, capice? capice. (it's a little late, but we're gonna quietly ignore that as well)

anyhow enjoy the sibling dynamic i wish i saw more of in fic. bozer and jack have brief cameos, but otherwise this is focused on riley and mac!

* * *

It's dark and it's cold and it's quiet.

These three things have a stranglehold on Riley's awareness, points of information that won't let go of her no matter how much she tries to ignore them. Under the dull ache of what feels like a giant bruise over her entire body, under the sharp memory of how she'd gotten to be in the position she's in now, pulses those facts. It's dark. It's cold. It's quiet.

From the start, Riley had a bad feeling about this one. That feeling had only gotten worse, as she and Mac had been separated by circumstance from Jack, forced to conduct their part of the mission without him, and without any contact with home base. They had gone radio silent, planning to rejoin Jack at a pre-planned rendezvous point, once their part of the objective was taken care of. It hadn't worked out that way. ( _It's dark._ )

It had been downhill from that point on. There had been gunrunners and weapons developers in ski masks, because why bother with originality when the cliche had remained in vogue for so long for a reason, a rickety old building with pitfalls and staircases with loose boards. That was the staircase Riley had gone down, the crash loud enough to alert those chasing her and Mac. She had lain there, stunned, watching while a man at the top of the staircase got Mac in a choke-hold too fast for him to fight back. ( _It's cold._ )

Riley doesn't know what they did to Mac. They'd been separated, at first, Riley left alone in a locked room, completely unfurnished. She hadn't been able to hear anything aside from distant voices, words indistinguishable, the occasional low moan of what sounded like pain. If things had been different, she might've been able to get out. If she'd had a computer, she could've done something. If she'd had an earwig, some way to contact the outside, if she hadn't been hurt too badly to think about doing much more than laying on the floor trying to breathe through the aftershocks of her fall, she might've been able to _help_. ( _It's quiet_.)

The local police found the building. That's how it ended. That's how Riley and Mac had been dragged down to a damp, freezing basement and left there with no light and no way out. The people they'd been there to find in the first place have long since left, and after that, after the police, who couldn't hear Riley's hoarse shouting, had left too, she turned her attention on Mac.

Maybe it had been cowardice that kept her focus off her friend to begin with. It probably had been, if she were honest - if she doesn't look at him, she can't see the damage.

She can't see the damage anyway, as it turns out. It's too dark, the kind of dark that seems almost to have a physical presence, a tangibility that could be felt and manipulated, held in the palm of one's hand. It's the kind of dark that always made Riley nervous. The kind that had your eyes straining and straining to pick out any kind of detail, any sense of surroundings by which to orient yourself, sort out which way was up and what things were real. A person starts to imagine things, when confronted only by featureless, velvet textured black.

Riley calls his name, and the back of her searching hand collides with a fabric covered forearm. Her hand flips quickly over and latches onto it, feels another hand, big and familiar, clutch hers in return.

"Riley?" Mac's voice is hazy and wavers on the second syllable. If it weren't for the fact that she knows better, has maintained some grasp of logic through buzzing paranoia in the base of her skull and aching hurt everywhere else, Riley would think the very darkness itself was muffling his speech.

"Yeah, it's me. Are you hurt? What did they do to you?"

Mac doesn't answer either of her questions but rather repeats his own, voice asking in a tone verging on agitated, "Riley?"

" _Yeah_ , man." Worry has made her voice go sharp, and she regrets it when she feels his arm tense under her grip. "What _happened_? "

"They, uh, they…" Riley hears him swallow, attempt to clear his throat, before continuing in that same blurred, disoriented voice that strikes a jolt of fear deep into her core.

Mac isn't supposed to sound like that. He's supposed to sound like electricity, like a current running from circuit to circuit, lightning quick and sun bright. It disturbs her, a creeping nausea in her gut added to the rest of the discomfort she is currently experiencing. Several long, labored moments pass before Mac manages to get his mouth to cooperate, to get out the words in an order that makes sense.

"I, uh. They drugged me. I think. Hurts."

"Shit," Riley mutters under her breath, the word jarring and loud in the otherwise silent room.

Mac doesn't talk again after that, at least not coherently, though he mumbles a little, nothing that can be shaped into actual words. After a time of hoping, of propping herself against a wall gripping Mac's forearm as he leans more and more heavily against her, Riley comes to the conclusion that at least for now, help isn't coming. With Mac out of commission as it's becoming more and more clear that he is, she's going to have to get them out of this herself. She holds him by the shoulders and eases him to the ground, leaning him back against the same wall she had been supporting them by, promising that she's not going anywhere, just exploring for a minute, for whatever amount of those words he currently understands.

It's slow going, moving around the room without a hint of light to navigate by. Her eyes have been trying to adjust to the darkness but without any illumination to adjust by, the best she's been able to make out are the faintest of outlines, the sense that a wall is drawing nearer. Riley walks with a hand out, fingers brushing basement air moistened concrete as she feels her way around the room. Despite the painstaking lethargy with which she navigates, it doesn't take long to figure out they've been dumped in a small room, as empty as the one she'd been in upstairs, with cement walls and floor, and one door out.

Locked, no way to even access the mechanism from the inside. Riley curses, thumping a hand against the door once, hard. It stings, rough wood scraping the skin of her palm, and behind her, Mac makes a quiet sound.

Following the wall again, Riley makes her way back to him. She slides down onto the floor beside where Mac is crumpled and reaches out, taking one of his hands in hers. It's a childish impulse borne of that horrible, cloying dark, the desire to cling to the one thing that can prove to her that she isn't alone right now, at the very least isn't trapped and left for dead in a basement somewhere by herself. Mac is here too, for what good that does. Is a terrible thing really less terrible, if there is someone else to experience it with you? Maybe not, but it makes her feel a fraction better about it, what that says about her notwithstanding.

Sitting there on the floor with nothing to focus on and nothing to do brings several things to Riley's attention. The first is the reminder of her earlier trip down the staircase, mounting in intensity without adrenaline or focus to stave it off. She feels like one giant contusion, nerves lambasting her loudly for her misstep, the one that had caused this whole situation to begin with. If she hadn't tripped and fallen they never would've been caught, Mac wouldn't have been drugged, they wouldn't be in the place they are now.

The second, third, and fourth things that make themselves abundantly clear to Riley's awareness are all about that place itself.

It's dark and it's cold and it's quiet.

The dark has been pressing on her for some time, an unavoidable first observation about her present circumstances. The cold, though, that crept up on her. It seeps in through the wall at her back, the floor beneath her, and she finds herself shivering. Not only that but she can feel Mac shivering next to her, and it's some combination of that sense of needing to _do something_ , to literally help in any way at all, and the desire to prove as strongly to herself as she can that she _isn't_ alone in this, that has Riley doing what she does next.

She shifts on the floor, prodding at Mac until he stirs, rising partially from the stupor induced by whatever he'd been shot up with, presumably in an attempt to make their interrogation of him go smoother, had they not been interrupted. With his clumsy attempts at cooperation, Riley soon gets herself and Mac arranged into more ideal positioning, curled against one another with his back to her, her arms wrapped as securely around his chest as she can manage. His shivering lessens a bit as they remain there, and Riley lets her head fall forward, Mac's hair under her temple and the rise and fall of his back as he breathes clear and unmistakable against her sternum.

It's a priceless comfort, having this brother of her heart held so close to it, but the stillness is unnerving. She knows from rides home in the back of cars, watching movies on Jack's couch, a handful of scattered circumstances, that Angus MacGyver is not what could be called easy to cuddle. He shifts and fidgets and moves, always searching for something to do, mind racing and fingers twitching without something to shape into something else. Not now, though. Now he is motionless and heavy against her, only that shallow, uneven breathing proof that he hasn't gone and left her alone after all.

The quiet presses in, silence a roar in Riley's ears, until she can't take it anymore, and starts talking.

"I keep waiting for you to figure it out." In the empty air, the words sound like gunfire, too loud and too abrupt, nevermind that she speaks in barely more than a whisper. "That I'm not like you guys."

Mac doesn't answer. She wasn't expecting him to. Riley tightens her grip and shifts to the side a bit, Mac's head slipping down to rest in the cradle of her shoulder and neck, breath skimming her collarbone in labored puffs of air.

"My mom used to tell me these stories," she says, and she can't tell why she says it, why this is the moment she remembers her mom sitting next to her in bed, arms big and strong when Riley was small and overwhelmed, voice rumbling out tale after tale. "She talked about the Maccabees and Esther. She told me about Sarah, and Ruth, about David and Goliath, and in all her stories, everyone was brave. The stories in Hebrew school, too, I think that's what they were trying to teach us. Jews are supposed to be brave. I learned that from the stories, and from my mom, but I don't- I think I'm a bad Jew, honestly, because I'm not brave. That's my big secret, Mac. That's what I'm so scared you guys are gonna figure out one day, that you're gonna crack wide open. I'm not _brave_. I'm _scared_."

Once she's admitted that, it's hard to stop, words coming like water from a floodgate burst open.

"I'm scared, Mac," Riley tells the top of his head, eyes squeezed tight shut and voice trembling. "Everything hurts and you won't answer me and Jews are supposed to be brave but I'm _not_. I'm scared _all the time_ , every mission we go on, every time we leave Phoenix, every time you have to come up with a plan."

Mac makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat, stirring fractionally, forehead bumping against the side of her neck. Riley's grip tightens reflexively, palm flexed over his side. She can feel his ribs under the shirt beneath her fingers, pushing at her hand when he breathes.

"I'm scared the plans won't work because I don't understand them," she tells him. "I'm scared for you mostly, because if there's ever a casualty I know it'll be you because I knowyou, and it scares the shit out of me that you don't seem to know that if you die it'll wreck us. It'll wreck Jack, and Bozer, and _me_. And you don't act like you _know that_." Riley swallows hard and tries to make her voice stop shaking. What for, she doesn't know. Mac is barely conscious and the only other one around to hear is herself. "I'm scared I'm going to lose my pain in the ass brother before I hardly got to _have_ him."

Riley tries to let it end there, but the silence presses in when she goes quiet, weighing down on her, heavier than Mac laying against her. She doesn't want to keep going, but that silence is just too much, and there's something almost liberating about the confession. It reminds her of Yom Kippur, of making her rounds and naming her wrongdoings, apologizing and asking forgiveness.

"I'm scared that you're gonna fall asleep and not wake up, they'll get here too late and you'll be gone. I'm scared that Jack will never forgive me if I let you die."

It's something they'd talked about already, something almost funny, the way hers and Mac's insecurities had grated against one another, forming a complimentary misunderstanding. It had been hard at first, to figure out where they stood, when, without communicating any of it to each other or to Jack, they had both felt somewhat replaced. Riley assumed that with Mac there, Jack didn't need her anymore, having found another outlet for any latent parental instincts. Conversely, Mac had believed that with Riley back, he'd been a subpar replacement for the real kid Jack had loved, and in a personal rather than professional sense, _he_ wasn't needed anymore.

They'd talked about it eventually, Riley and Mac, laughed about it even. It had been relatively early in their friendship, even before Bozer found out about Phoenix, and it had been a place where they could have fractured, but hadn't. It had been a revealing, healing conversation for both of them, but the remnants of it lingered, and the thought of facing Jack after losing Mac because _she_ made a mistake makes her feel sick.

"Nobody I love has ever died before, Mac," she says in a hoarse whisper. "I've lost people, people have left, but nobody's ever _died_."

Uncountable minutes pass, during which Riley confesses everything. She tells Mac's now fully unconscious form that she's afraid of spiders, and guns, and of getting sent back to prison. She tells him that she's scared of failure, of letting him down, letting Jack and Bozer and Matty down. Riley talks until her throat hurts, and pretends that the tears she can feel streaking down her face, hot against the cold of the room, are because of the pain, because of her fall.

When the door finally comes down, when Jack finally comes to get them, Riley is still there on the floor, holding Mac tightly. The shaft of light from the stairwell and flashlights is blinding and she ducks her head down, presses her face into Mac's hair, and sobs in relief.

It's hard to adjust to the surroundings of a hospital, after however long she'd spent in that dark, cold, quiet basement. The hospital is none of those things, filled with bright light, warmed blankets, and the bustle of people always late getting somewhere important. Riley has been cleared by the doctor and given a couple painkillers to address the pretty serious bruising she'd sustained in the fall down the stairs. Mac is a more serious situation, having apparently sustained a couple of moderately severe injuries during the interrupted interrogation, as well as whatever he'd been dosed with. He's been set up in a hospital room, and Riley separated from Bozer at the door. He'd been with Jack in Mac's room while Riley was getting cleared, and now that she's arrived, he's agreed to get coffee for them, leaving quietly with a tight smile and nod in her direction. She'd honestly have appreciated a hug right about now, but knows he's too cautious of her injuries to have risked it.

Inside the room, Jack is asleep in a chair, head tipped back and arms folded. She shakes her head at him, then turns her focus to the room's conscious occupant, which is a nice change from earlier. Mac grins at her hazily, waving a hand with an IV attached, thankfully not dislodging it in the process.

"Riley!" he says brightly, and she snorts. It's a welcome change from the last time she saw him.

Walking over and noting that there's only one chair, currently occupied by their sleeping watchdog, Riley opts to perch on the edge of Mac's bed. She spends a long moment just looking at him, eyes drinking in the sight of her friend not necessarily healthy but at least awake and most definitely alive. It's Mac that speaks first, and what he says sends a jolt of shock through her.

"I think you're brave."

"What?" Riley asks, hoping it's just medication induced rambling. No such luck, as she discovers when he elaborates.

"I didn't hear a lot," he tells her, "but I heard some of it. When you were talking to me in the basement. About being scared."

"Oh." Suddenly, Riley finds the loose thread she's discovered and begun picking at to be a riveting focus of her attention. "Okay."

"Do you want to leave? Leave Phoenix, I mean. It's okay if you do. You can say you do, it won't hurt my feelings or anything if you're honest." He sounds earnest, and Riley raises her eyebrows at him.

 _The hell it won't_ , she thinks, and gives the answer serious thought anyway, to be sure that when she gives her answer it is indeed the honest one.

"No. No, of course I don't."

"You're scared. All the time, when we go on missions."

"Yeah."

"And you want to stay. Keep doing it."

"Yeah."

"I think that makes you braver than any of us."

Mac's words are sincere and gentle, and Riley feels her eyes sting. Her hand clenches and unclenches in the fabric of the blanket, and she won't look up and meet his eyes, not until he nudges her and she sees he's shifted as far to the side of the bed as he can get, the arm without the IV held out as an invitation.

Given the stress of the last day or so, Riley figures they've earned this, and accepts the offer. She scoots up and shuffles around until she's tucked under his arm, her head resting against his chest. It's an inverse of their previous positioning, and it's nice being on the receiving end of the comfort this time. Despite recent events, the arm around her is strong and secure, and she finds herself drifting, finally giving in to the exhaustion she'd been battling away. As she succumbs to darkness, this time a warm darkness backdropped by beeping monitors and shuffling hospital personnel, Mac's words echo in her mind, a balm to an age-old insecurity.

 _I think that makes you braver than any of us._


End file.
